Keeping In Touch With Friends and Family

With our ever expanding social circles it’s super easy to forget to get a hold of someone and touch bases every once in awhile. The longer you stay out of contact the easier it is to forget. Other than scrolling down from your recent messages into the backwater logs of dead conversations, what can you do to help keep those bonds of friendship strong?

Well, a name and date book can go a long way. Having something physical to organize information in stands as a good reminder to actually check the thing. A good tip for regularly keeping tabs on everyone in your social circles using your contact list is to use timestamped sticky tabs for the last time that you touched bases or had a date. This can be especially effective if you have color coded tabs for seasons or months so you have that flashy green reminder sticking out the side of your book letting you know that you haven’t called Auntie Mariel since last October. Any sort of easily noticeable and well organized visual reminder can work, but literally keeping tabs on the last time you called is a great way to follow up with any sort of frequency.

Another really nice tip for visiting people is to organize an extra contact list for other cities you occasionally visit. It’s best to avoid that embarrassing situation on social media when old acquaintances call you out on not making time for visiting them when you were already up in that neck of the woods. Having a travel contact list is just the perfect trick for these sorts of trips.

A final little trick is to use the bi-annual mass-email. Social media updates hardly convey any sort of personal message to your friends and loved ones, but giving everyone the occasional update on how your life is going - straight into their inbox adds a nice personal touch to this. Of course sending out real letters can be a whole lot more meaningful - but we’re trying to make things easier for you.

The take home here is that a little organization can make keeping up with everyone a lot more manageable and leave plenty fewer people scorned, but of course you should still have some sort of layered social circle who gets their own sort of frequency. You’ll hardly be able to keep up with tea time with everyone you know, but you certainly have time to say hello.